Red Herring 100 Asia shortlists IndiaMart, iXiGO, Pinstorm, Komli, MouthShut, Yatra

Red Herring Magazine has narrowed the field of contenders for its annual Red Herring 100 Asia 2008 list to 200 companies, including Adhysteria , IndiaMart , InstaColl , iXiGO , iYogi , JiGrahak Mobility Solutions , Komli Media , mChek India Payment Systems , MouthShut , OnMobile , Pinstorm , RateGain , Travis Internet (Ticketvala.com), TringMe , Way2SMS and Yatra Online . The 100 winners will be announced at the Red Herring 100 Asia event in Hong Kong, on December 2-3, 2008.

“The 200 finalists we selected from across 16 countries and regions are all excellent contenders,” Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief, Red Herring, has said. “They are exceptional companies who thrive on innovation and strongly define the important role of technology in Asia's economy and throughout the world.”

Interestingly, this is the third time in four years when Pinstorm, a pay-for-performance digital marketing firm, has been selected by Red Herring among its list of 200 hottest companies from Asia. Pinstorm was earlier selected among Red Herring 200 Asia in 2005 and 2006.

“We first won when we were barely 20 people working out of one office. Today we are over 120 from 7 offices in 6 countries - and it's a thrill to know that the world sees us just as hot as ever,” Mahesh Murthy, founder, Pinstorm, has said. “Our pay-for-performance model is revolutionizing advertising both on the search and display fronts - and we hope to continue this hot streak for a long time to come.”

The Red Herring 100 Asia is an exclusive event honouring 100 cutting-edge private technology companies from across the Asia-Pacific region including China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia and Vietnam.

The nominees for the awards are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their ecosystem.

“iXiGO’s nomination for this prestigious award for the second year in a row is an acknowledgement of our strong track record of bringing market-leading innovations to life,” Aloke Bajpai, founder and CEO, iXiGO.com has said.

“We are delighted to be selected as a finalist by Red Herring for this prestigious award,” Amar Goel, founder and chief executive officer, Komli Media, has said. “The credit goes to our team which is working very hard to solve some of the hardest problems in online advertising.”